Prosecuted Islamist terror cell planned big bomb attack on France

12 people were arrested in France over the weekend during raids carried out by the authorities. They were allegedly planning to carry out the biggest bomb attack on France in years.

Reports from BBC and Reuters state that five of the twelve detained were released, however the seven that remain in custody are suspected of terrorist activity. Materials supposedly used for the construction of a bomb were discovered during the raids. Raids which followed an attack on a kosher shop in Sarcelles, Paris on September 19 of this year which left one person dead. Jeremie Louis-Sidney, the man allegedly behind that attack was killed during an exchange of fire with the police raiders over the weekend.

The foiled attack in question is believed to have potentially been the biggest afflicted on French society since the bombing carried out by an Algerian Islamist group that killed eight people on the Paris metro back in 1995.

The prosecutor of the 12 suspects over the weekend, Francois Molins, stated that, "Investigators rapidly unearthed very worrying details on the state of planning progress." He went on to say that he is "not making comparisons but simply highlighting that in terms of danger and preparations - notably all the materials that were set to be part of the explosive device - we've not seen a similar case in French judicial police records since 1996."

The French security forces have been extra vigilant with regard to terrorist attacks in the past year following the murder of three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and French paratroopers in Toulouse by a French Islamist named Mohamed Merah earlier this year.